Established on May 2, 1959, by owner Nepal Chandra Dutta, Priya was built by the owner of Khanna cinema who had worked as its architect and the contractor. Nepal Chandra Dutta is the grandfather of current owner Arijit Dutta. A 1929-make vintage car is kept on display at Priya. It is owned by Dutta's maternal grandfather Arun Chandra Gupta who was a conservator of forest and had killed a huge number of maneaters. Nepal had other businesses as well as interest in film production. Purnima Pictures and Priya Films were production houses owned by the family. Piyali Films was their distribution company. The Duttas have produced some cult movies including Ray's Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1969), Aranyer Dinratri (1970) and Pratidwandi (1970), Tapan Sinha's Hatey Bazarey (1967) and Arundhuti Devi's Chhuti (1967). Other notable productions include Bonojyotsna, Saraswatir Pratigya and Kalochhaya. All the negatives of the last three films are lost. The final colour negative of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne was lost too. It was retrieved from the master positive Duttas had. The throne used in Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne is also kept on display at Priya. So is a 35mm Westrex projector. Whenever Raj Kapoor came to Kolkata, he would not stay in a hotel but in the Dutta's penthouse since he loved the chingri cutlet prepared by Jyotikana. Later Hindi film premieres of Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani (2000), Aks (2001) and Dil Chahta Hai (2001) had seen Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan respectively drop by at this property. A huge number of Bengali film premieres have been hosted at Priya. Police protection was given for screening of controversial films at Priya. The bigger jolt came when a fire broke out at Priya on August 5, 2018. A day later, a letter was issued by the state government to shut down operations. On August 7, a letter was issued with recommendations that took two months to be implemented. Two inspections were conducted on August 24 and August 27. On August 29, the letter directed the owners to operate only the 'Priya cinema hall located on the first and second floor of the B+G+IV storeyed mixed occupancy high risk building for which life and fire safety have been found complied with". However, it took longer to reopen and the cinema finally opened its doors on February 20, 2019, with a rerun of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne. Renovation began with Karan Arjun (1995). Initially, Priya had 928 seats. Later, the number was reduced to 545.